Now I am Mum

Thursday, 9 March 2017

Happy first birthday to my wonderful daughter.It’s been an emotional week thinking back a year and reflecting on how life has
changed, how you have grown and how we have all developed as people.This time last year it was all about me.Today, it’s all about you.For now you have become a person in your own
right and I’m so proud to see you learning about the world for yourself and enjoying
life with your family and friends.

When I was pregnant with you, and in your early days, I
never stopped to imagine life with one-year-old you; it seemed so far off.The practicalities of the here and now were
keeping me busy and I was wrapped up in preparing for and learning how to
juggle each day with the sudden addition of a baby.What equipment did we need, were you a boy or
girl, stocking up on essentials, how would it feel giving up work for a year…
followed by how do I get you to sleep, when do you need feeding, how will we
cope with sleepless nights, how do I know what you need when. Reading Gina Ford and the Baby Whisperer
eagerly to try and learn the ropes and get things right (my bibles in the early
days, but it turned out some days a routine just wasn’t going to work, so the
books went out the window after a few months of stress and tears and we went
more with the flow).

If I had tried to think as far ahead as this day, what I would
have imagined would have lacked the colour and depth of life now.I might have imagined a small human able to
crawl, empty cupboards, clap, make some sounds, bang objects together.But having watched you grow and develop in
such amazing ways over the last year you are so much more than a checklist of
baby skills.You are a wriggly, funny
little chatterbox with your own personality and little quirks.You love climbing the stairs and being chased,
parading up and down relentlessly with Dexter the push along dog; you put your
head to one side to make us laugh and get attention; you hate having your arms
touched or being fed. You love to be
independent. But most of all I could
never possibly have imagined quite how much you mean to me.The thought of you being hurt literally
brings tears to my eyes.I look at you
and can’t believe we created you, such a perfect little human.I feel sorry for the pre-mum me at my
oblivion to what I was missing.

Life before you was all about me, or me and your dad.Us, and what we wanted to do.We spent our weekends and holidays exploring
the world, sailing, walking, running, off in Aggie the campervan. It was a happy, exciting, and adventurous
time.Occasionally I miss our carefree
life.Tiring and relentless as it sometimes
felt, it was nothing to the 24/7 nature of having a young baby.There have been times over the past year when
I have craved being just me again, rather than the feeding and nappy changing machine
who’s life revolves around someone else and has no control over their day.That has been one of the hardest things to
adjust to.Days are made or broken by
naps, and are essentially unpredictable.When there are chores to do, there is nothing more wearing than a
disrupted night followed by a demanding, tired baby who can’t get to sleep, won’t
smile and cries whenever you try to do anything for them or with them.The chores don’t get done, and you feel like
a hopeless being that after a whole day at home you still haven’t managed to
hoover or go and get some milk.But
these times are fleeting; negative thoughts soften with the little moments of
love that are scattered throughout the day.A little face peeping round the corner to see where I’ve gone, an
unexpected smile, a quiet cuddle, a tickle together that holds your attention
on the changing mat.

I feel so proud to be your mum when I look at you
today.So proud of the person you are
developing into, at how far you have come in the last year.It’s been a privilege to have a year off work
to spend with you, and I couldn’t imagine a happier way to spend my time.Sorry for all the mistakes I have made, for I
know I’ve not been perfect - maybe that’s the downside to being the first
child, but we have muddled through together and come up smiling at the end of
the blur.We have been on a steep
learning curve together.

Wishing you lots of fun and happy times over the next year,
and with lots of love (more than you’ll ever understand - perhaps until you
have your own children one day),

It seems to have been one of those particularly eventful
weeks in the world of baby mishaps.The
kind that is marked by regular low level events that are just enough to have
the adrenaline pumping and cause a little flutter of panic but turn out to not
necessitate any further action.The standard
for the week was set with the ingestion of artificial coal from the fireplace
and subsequent black face, dungerees and carpet, a finger sweep around the
mouth that inevitably led to a full volume expression of significant
displeasure from the Little One, and a swift google search of ‘is it dangerous
to eat artificial coal?’ (NB, essentially the answer is ‘no’: breathe a sigh of
relief and confine said coals to a plastic bag in a cupboard for the
foreseeable future).

Between scrubbing black handprints off the carpets, dealing
with projectile poo (the down the leg and up to the shoulder blade variety, a
whole new level of messiness in a wriggly crawler compared to what now seems
like the manageable stranded turtle position of a newborn), and removing
wheetabix from its concreted position on the white walls where the Little One
has been practising her newfound skill at throwing, there’s been little chance
for reflection.But indulging in a
little reflection is a prerequisite this week, for it marks a year since I
started my mat leave.And somehow that
feels like a pretty big landmark.

My first diary entry on mat leave oozes an overwhelming
sense of excitement, hopes and aspirations for the year ahead, but I was slightly
disappointed to read my acknowledgement that I had no idea of what was coming.It would have been good for a laugh.I also did a sarcastic snort when I read that
I was finding it difficult to enjoy some days to myself, having vented to my
friend only this morning that I NEVER GET TIME TO MYSELF.

And so, one year on, which realities of maternity leave
would I definitely not have predicted?Well, here is my shortlist:

1)Naps will rule your year.A good day is simply defined by naps of
appropriate lengths at appropriate times with minimal fuss.A bad day involves short naps, no naps,
crying, walking endlessly around the block.Naps are a total head fuck: you think you’re getting some time to do
those jobs?You’ve got another thing
coming!

2)You are never more than 30 minutes away from
either a nap or a feed.Once weaned,
that 30 minutes is filled with mopping the floor.

3)You will crave sugar for at least 6 months;
coffee and cake will become an essential component of the day, no longer
considered a treat.

4)In hindsight, the first year will have flown
by.But at the same time the days that
fill it will often feel like the longest days of your life (and may well
literally be).

5)Poo will become a topic of much
fascination.There is more to say about
it than you could possibly imagine.And
you won’t be able to resist the lure of a close examination once weaning is
underway to identify which undigested fruit skin has re-presented itself to you
this time.

6)Google will become your night-time best friend for
all questions relating to sleep and feeding, both of which you will become
obsessed with.

But for now, without further ado, I’m unashamedly off to
indulge in a little more ‘this time last year’ nostalgia.In hindsight, our last weekend, last night,
last meal at home before going to hospital have become very fond memories (less
so the birth bit; carefully glossing over those hours).Maybe it’s knowing what a wonderful time lay
ahead for us.Maybe it’s looking back
fondly at a pair of enthusiastic and naïve new parents.For it’s been a rollercoaster for sure
(cringe, amongst other things, at the memory of telling my husband it was ok
for him as he could ‘swan off to work’ each day), but the deep emotional highs,
the bond, the little things day-to-day, are all the bits you really and truly
can’t imagine and can only understand by experiencing it.What a wonderful and fulfilling year it has
been, and all thanks to the Little One.

Thursday, 23 February 2017

So… I’ve failed miserably at my New Year’s Resolution:to write one blog post per week.That was it.A seemingly realistic goal.And
yet it’s now mid-February and this is the first time I’ve contemplated stringing
a written sentence together.Blog page
abandoned.Twitter and Facebook feeds
unloved.And I’d like to be able to
offer a justifiable reason.But I can’t:just life, now I am mum.And blog was the first victim.

Since I last scrawled some words, a fairly standard bunch of
family events have been grappled with:a
hand, foot and mouth outbreak, vomiting bug, christening, Christmas, two
birthdays.But after emerging from all
things snot this week for the first time since November, I prefer to blame the undertone
of green stuff for the productivity reality check.Overnight, getting through became the aim in
life.

Days on end spent changing snot-stained sheets and
perfecting the art of pouncing on green slugs as they head slowly south, about
to combine deliciously with the yogurt moustache of a baby who will only
contemplate self-feeding; or on a chunk of green crust that flutters in the
breeze and tantalisingly disappears with each new breath before it can be
caught in a tissue.The satisfaction
experienced at catching either without leaving most of it smeared across a
cheek as the head abruptly whips away in a lightening move, is only slightly
detracted from by the energetic meltdown that results from the sheer indignity
of Mr Snot being removed from his rightful place.

Nights have been broken by episodes of blood-curdling
screams, the kind that have you out of bed in a panic wondering what scene of
devastation you are about to enter.Desperately
rocking an unsettled baby at 3am after a dose of calpol and a feed, shivering
from the cold and aching all over. My sense of self-pity is usurped by the ever-present
mum guilt:“you should feel sorry for
your baby, not you”; “you can’t even comfort her, what a failure”.

Two weeks with no other baby contact and it’s no coincidence
that we have emerged from the snot haze for the first time in months.A smiling baby, settled sleeps, good feeds,
and excited playtimes have been restored.Normal life has resumed.Some days
being a parent is the most natural and easiest thing in the world; on many
others it’s the hardest.Being
quarantined at home for days on end is miserable.A germ-filled haze of sneezes, snot, coughing
and crying presides, grumpiness rules and any semblance of glamour dissipates.No smiles, no contact with the outside world,
24/7 isolation.Fair play to everyone
out there who manages to blog and be a mum, it’s a great way to share the
gritty bits if you can stick to your new year’s resolution.Take two commencing!

Monday, 21 November 2016

On first thoughts, a four-hour train journey didn’t seem a
big deal. After all, I’m a fully-fledged
adult with much experience of negotiating the British transport system and
indeed many foreign ones too, all without drama and with a 100% success rate of
getting to where I need to be without hitch.But there’s something about doing such a journey with a small person in
tow that renders you feeling completely incompetent, and results in you
spending hours planning the logistics and dreaming up all sorts of potential
pitfalls, disasters and worst-case scenarios, rather like you’re embarking on a
mission to the moon.The worried exchange
with my parents as I announced that I was coming back on the train to see them
only served to further boost my sense of incompetence at getting from A to B
without disaster.It takes you back to
the first time you ventured out of home on your own as a child (like, to your
friend’s house two doors down), the relief palpable when you arrive back home from
a solo trip into the outside world without incident.

And so it was that the Big Train Journey was meticulously
planned; the trending topic in our house for weeks on end.I opted for the sling, packed exceptionally light
(I mean like no spare shoes, a move so drastic and unprecedented that pre-baby
I would have laughed in the face of such a ludicrous suggestion), and then proceeded
to fill the rest of the suitcase to bulging with the usual baby paraphernalia
plus some to cover all said eventualities.A separate day rucksack avoided the potential for an eruption of pants,
nursing pads and nappies over unsuspecting passengers as I opened the
pressurised container of an overfull suitcase one-handed to retrieve a clean
babygrow after the inevitable poo explosion.

We set off optimistically to take on the might of the London
Underground, the general public at large and negotiate two changes of
train.I was pretty happy to be pushchair
free on the underground and able to hop on an escalator rather than stare
around blankly for hidden lifts in the middle of a busy concourse, watching everyone
else course with ease towards daylight.All
was going swimmingly (apart from the revelation that even the ‘quietest’ baby
toys sound hideously loud in a relatively quiet pendolino carriage.Huge apologies to the lady in front who was
escaping from her baby for her first adult weekend away).

However, it turns out so-called baby-wearing isn’t without
its flaws:rather like when you drive a
car twice the size of your usual one, having a baby strapped to your front
leads to some significant misjudgements of space. I appreciated my extra width, for example, a
little too late for the man I squeezed in next to on the (stupidly narrow) tube
seats, who thought he was being pickpocketed by the incessantly wriggling baby legs
kicking him in the thigh.Similarly, an
adjusted centre of gravity and baby legs protruding at right angles make a
journey down a train isle to the toilet a full-blown obstacle course, and in my
case resulted in a rather too close encounter with a suit trying to do some
work on his laptop.But the biggest challenge
comes on arrival at the toilet.I’m not
talking about the big toilets where the door open/closed/locked buttons are at
a nerve-inducing distance from where you sit in your most compromised position,
but the standard size toilets.You
inevitably end up in far closer quarters with the toilet than ever desired as
you squeeze down next to it to enable yourself to shut the concertina door,
risk bashing the baby’s head on the sink as you bend to sit down/stand up, and simultaneously
bang your elbows on either wall as you attempt to get your trousers back up
under the sling and 20lb of sagging baby.Given these logistics and the inability to see your feet, the pool of
water in front of the toilet which would usually be avoided at all costs, just in
case it’s the wrong kind of leak, is sadly inescapable.Lesson learned: coffee consumption can only
be on a needs must basis.

Saturday, 5 November 2016

Growing up, Halloween was a miserable affair.The front door was locked and the doorbell
unanswered.Halloween was banned:
witchcraft was not to be celebrated.So
while friends got hyperactive on the spoils of trick or treating, we sat at
home sulking.

And so you might imagine in my own home I would have a
supply of sweets ready for the stream of children pursuing an autumn sugar
rush.Not so. I confess I have never bought sweets for trick
or treaters.I am whole-heartedly the
Boring Adult:I turn the lights off and
pretend not to be in.I tut at parents
who let their children out on the streets to terrorise neighbours and demand
sweets from strangers.(Have they all
forgotten the stranger danger campaign?)

But this year I have sensed change as I transition to the
parenting era.My hard line is
softening.For the first time I got Boring
Adult guilt: with no hiding options
available, I resorted to my Emergency Biscuit Supply to avoid facing up to the
harsh reality of having nothing for the little witch boy who trick or treated
me on my drive. In reality, I wouldn’t
yet go so far as to say this softening is for the sake of the fun of the
nation’s children (transition clearly not yet complete), but more in pursuit of
my own sugar needs.As cake currently
has the standing of dietary requirement in my life, a maternity leave addiction,
there is little I won’t do in the name of cake.(I am a firm believer that if the day comes that I no longer feel the
need for a daily dose, then it’s time to go back to work).And so for the sake of not missing out on a
cake opportunity, I readily abandoned my anti-witchcraft principles for a
Halloween afternoon tea party.

For the very first time I joined in the Halloween fun.I abused my position of trust and wrestled the
Little One into an amusing £6 pumpkin babygrow from Sainsbury’s before duly
attending various Halloween-themed baby groups and afternoon tea parties.In case you’re wondering the cake was
great.And with the precedent for the
next 10 years set, you have my word that in the name of not being totally hypocritical
I will stock up the cupboards full of sweets for next year’s tribe of trick or
treaters.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

“How old is she?” (If I had a £1 for every time I’ve been asked that…)

“Seven months now!” (Said with usual tone of exclamation, as if the passing of time is normally an impossibility).

It was a fairly standard opener to any conversation these days. And then dad to one-year-old Millie simply replied “I don’t remember Millie being that age. I suppose I won’t remember her being at this stage soon either.” Nothing like a bit of matter-of-factness.
I was reminded of this conversation on